Editorial: We need an independent AG

Tuesday

With any luck and ability to use that Yale education, Bush will let the new attorney general do his or her work without agendas or interference.

His should have been a historic tenure and a beacon for disenfranchised citizens of this country.

Instead, because of his loyalty to a failing presidency bent on making its own rules as it goes along, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is leaving office one step, if that, ahead of the bellowing masses in Congress and around the country.

Gonzales, the son of migrant workers who became the first Hispanic to be named attorney general, is the latest of President Bush’s inner circle of acolytes to make a hasty retreat from Washington after a series of policy failures emanating from their offices undercut the president’s ability to gain the confidence of the American people.

Few have had as short a stay in office with as much controversy, much of it from the outset, than Gonzales.

The perceived architect of the Bush administration’s response to terror suspects in the wake of Sept. 11, Gonzales once called portions of the Geneva Convention, which protects the life and rights of prisoners of war, as “quaint” and “outdated.” His memos and interpretations led to what many saw as abuses and torture of terror suspects, contrary to the history of our country’s treatment of prisoners.

Gonzales also was the architect of Bush’s continued use of signing statements to make new laws. His view of the presidency, especially in time of war, was that the commander in chief had broad powers to curtail personal freedoms if it meant enhancing security. The outline has led to the widening of surveillance and detaining suspects without court or congressional approval.

Under Gonzales watch at the Department of Justice, longtime employees and lawyers complained of meddling in civil rights cases, politically motivated orders to ease the case against tobacco companies, and firings over such things as refusing to play down a report on racial profiling.

In perhaps the most damning partisan assault in Gonzales’ files was the canning of nine U.S. Attorneys who were not, according to one of his emails, “loyal Bushies.”

What it all added up to was an Attorney General - and a White House - running roughshod over an office that has to show at least a modicum of independence and impartiality. Gonzales, a longtime Bush aide from his Texas days, was neither.

What he was was a shield for the White House from Congressional fire and a waterboy for administration initiatives to try to regain much of the power of the executive branch that was rightly abrogated in the wake of Vietnam, Watergate and Richard Nixon.

Bush complained that Gonzales was forced out by Democratic zealots bent on dragging the embattled attorney general “through the mud for political reasons.”

Indeed, Gonzales’ problems were political. Unfortunately for him, they were Bush’s “political reasons.”

Let’s hope that the president is not so stubborn as to refuse to offer a successor who can reach out and build bridges with the Democrats in Congress, much the way Robert Gates has since taking over as Secretary of Defense after Donald Rumsfeld resigned.

And, with any luck and ability to use that Yale education, Bush will let the new attorney general do his or her work without agendas or interference.

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